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Sexuality in the school… is it sexist?

School is hard enough with parents worrying if their children are getting bullied at school, now they have to worry about their children being sent home because of how their dressed.

Being a parent is hard, but teachers are now making it harder for parents by sending home their daughters for the way they’re dressed because it’s distracting our son’s. If that’s the case nobody’s getting an education these days.

If you’re a parent on social media or read internet news, I’m sure you’ve heard of girls being sent home because how they’re dressed. I’m on Facebook and I’ve come across parents complaining how their daughter got sent home because her top was too revealing or whatever she was wearing was a distraction to the boys at the school. I even remember coming across a parent absolutely outraged that her daughter went to school in a summer dress and was told to put a top under the dress as the spaghetti straps were too thin. Too thin? What is too thin?

I remember growing up and never heard of students being sent home for the way they were dressed. Mind you when I was growing up I was never allowed to wear makeup or revealing clothing to school. In this day and age things have changed. More girls are wearing makeup, wearing skimpier clothes where their stomachs are showing, and most girls are all about what’s in right now. But please inform me what our clothes have to do with our education?

I came across more than one article on girls being sent home because of their clothing of choice. Not boys of course. Regardless if the child was wearing a tight shirt or tight pants. School dress codes across Canada prohibit all young people from wearing a wide range of potentially inappropriate clothes. So what exactly is inappropriate?

I couldn’t find anything that says exactly what is appropriate and what is not appropriate, it seems that it is up to the school to name what’s appropriate and what’s not. Over the years, many schools have tended to restrict girls clothing to prevent distracting their male counterparts. But that misguided solution sends the wrong message to both genders.

Social researchers say, painting girls as shameful seductresses that must be contained and boys as aggressors unable to control their primal urges is the problem. So what they’re saying is when I send my son to school I’m raising him to look at girls wearing a tank top that might show a little cleavage and that it’s going to distract my son from school. I’m a single mom, I’m teaching my son not only to respect women but to take responsibility for his actions. What a girl wears shouldn’t teach our daughters that their bodies are contaminated, distracting and evil.

Schools want girls to look like they’re good girls that are polite and clean, that looking like Taylor Swift isn’t appropriate. But girls look up to women like Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus. It’s no different than those Monster High Dolls with their skimpy clothes, or Barbie with her perfect body and skimpy clothes.

The assumption is that boys are active sexual beings who look at desirable girls, while girls are only passive objects of their affection. My son is 4 years old, he sure isn’t going to school and looking at girls with desire and he sure isn’t a sexual being that will look at another young girl wearing a summer dress with sexual desire. I would hope I’m raising my son better than that. How is the school sending your child home because they believe their clothes are a distraction helping them at all?

I believe schools need to include the students on discussions when it comes to clothing and what they can and can’t wear or at least involve the parents. If the schools are so worried about what our boys might do or think seeing a girl in a shirt that shows her midriff than maybe school curriculum should cover discussions around respect, sexual harassment and rape, introduce the concept of consent and what’s appropriate in relationships to both genders. Girls are held responsible for anything bad that might happen to them because they were wearing … spaghetti straps or short shorts or showing their cleavage or showing their tummies, I’ve heard men say a woman deserved to get raped after going to the bar because she wouldn’t have been raped if she wasn’t wearing what she was wearing?

So if I go out say tomorrow with short shorts on and a tank top that shows some cleavage and go for a walk, I deserved to be raped for what I’m wearing? Is this what our schools are teaching our children? If you don’t talk to boys about how to respect girls and people in general, absolutely nothing will change. Healthy expression of who we are, for girls, often comes in the form of how they dress. They don’t have a whole lot of control over anything else, so why are we taking that away from them as well

I’m sure we all see our children leave the home in the morning and don’t think there’s anything wrong with what they are wearing. Do these schools have a list of appropriate stores that they believe we should be buying our children’s clothes from? I can understand why parents get so upset at teachers when things like this are happening. I don’t even have a daughter and I’m disgusted by this situation, and I know if it was me with the daughter who got sent home from school because of what she was wearing, well I can tell you I’d be the school’s worst nightmare. Anyone else have any stories where their child got sent home from school because of what they were wearing? How can the schools handle this situation?